CICA Loss of Earnings no tax paid.
Where CICA applicant has failed to pay income tax.
An applicant has to prove their loss of earnings. The CICA Scheme only allows an applicant to make this head of claim if the applicant has been unable to work for at least 28 weeks. The CICA Scheme activates on the 29th week of loss.
Applicants will usually be unsuccessful if they cannot demonstrate their lost earnings. Generally it has been held that at common law, where earnings have been won from honest endeavour, then even if the applicant has not paid income tax, then the net loss should be allowed.
Where for example, the applicant has been paid cash-in-hand whilst they were in receipt of state benefit, thereby evading payment of income tax and national insurance, it would be unfair and against public policy to award any loss of earnings in this situation.
The CICA will examine the way the income was earned and can reduce or refuse any loss of earnings claim if it believes that the earnings are arrived at illegally or due to fraud. This decision should be arrived at completely unconnected to the cicumstances of the assault.
Wait LJ opnied in Hunter v Butler The Times (1995) 28th December at p403E to H
"(b) It offends public policy in two respects. First, it assumes that someone who had committed fraud in the past would continue to do so in future; ignoring the possibilities of repentance or detection. Secondly it treats the proceeds of illegally concealed earnings as providing a valid head of recovery by way of damages for loss of injury. When due account is taken of the need for judges to avoid subjective moral judgments and to accept the realities of life in the modern welfare state, there remain certain fundamental principles essential to any just and civilised society which provide the rails within which the unruliest horse may safely run. When Lord Wright in Davies v Powell Duffryn Associated Collieries Ltd [1942] AC 601, 617 spoke of the 'damages proportioned to the injury' for which provision is made by what is now section 3(1) of the Act of 1976 as being 'a hard matter of pounds, shillings and pence, subject to the element of reasonable future probabilities' the pounds of which he spoke were those derived from wages honestly earned or income honestly received."
For an over-view of this case click to http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/no-damages-award-for-loss-of-moonlighting-earnings-1322075.html.
Please telephone freephone 0800 169 3683 for free advice on how to begin your CICA criminal injury compensation claim.